Former two-time world champion Anthony Joshua has been told he has no chance of beating any top heavyweight.
Joshua, 33, has been a shadow of his former self in recent fights as the Brit picked up his first win in over two years by beating Jermaine Franklin in an uninspiring performance last month. 'AJ' has been told the boxing world is turning on him by talkSPORT pundit Simon Jordan, who also thinks the former champion has no chance of beating the likes of Tyson Fury, Oleksandr Usyk and Deontay Wilder.
"The boxing world is now turning full circle on Anthony Joshua and saying, ‘You’re done’. I think people are actually beginning to laugh at the concept that Anthony Joshua could beat one of the top heavyweights now. Recently we’ve seen him fight Franklin when it seemed to be the same situation was there. There might have been a few technical improvements where he stepped back and took his time and got range a little bit better," Jordan said on the Up Front podcast.
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Joshua lost his heavyweight belts when he was shockingly beaten by Andy Ruiz Jr in 2019, but the Brit reclaimed his world titles in their rematch later that year. After defending them against Kubrat Pulev in December 2020, 'AJ' lost them again to Oleksandr Usyk and failed to win them back in their rematch last August.
Jordan thinks Joshua has been on the decline ever since his 2017 world title fight against Wladimir Klitschko, as the pundit added: "In my view is that his demise started after he fought Klitschko, where he went into a certain place to have to win that fight. I think since then he’s gone on and fought in a certain way which has taken him out of the way of risk and he isn’t prepared to put himself in the way of risk that he once did before, when he was a wrecking machine."
Joshua has been linked to a fight against Wilder in Saudi Arabia at the end of the year in a monumental event that could also feature an undisputed heavyweight title fight between Fury and Usyk. Those plans were recently trumped by Fury insisting that he sent Joshua's team a contract for a September meeting, something that Matchroom Boxing boss Eddie Hearn has denied.
“There’s definitely no contract. [Fury's] team have not sent any contract to us or Anthony Joshua. So I’m not sure what he’s talking about there," Hearn told Boxing Social. "George Warren did email on Wednesday saying that they’d be interested to look at the fight for September. I then called him, we had a chat, explained the situation."
